


The Exhaustible Virtue of Patience

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Emotional, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Gen, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transgender, Transstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A freeform, slight purpose prose piece about Porrim Maryam and the moments she needs alone, like any other troll. A lot of Latula and Kankri. Small discussions of what being trans would be like after eternities in the afterlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Exhaustible Virtue of Patience

When you desire contentment, you would rather seek the stars instead of Kankri or anyone else you bother with. The queen of gossip and public appearances needs her rest as much as the outspoken, righteous red teens.

Astronomy is so easily aligned. Maps count out space, planets orbit by sweeps, and, most important of all, stars break through the night in constellations, an orderly rebellion against the black fabric that pleases the inner outrage in you at the world. Or perhaps like jewels perched on the hem of a cloak, sewn close to the round, pearl white button of the moon.

If you could, you would pluck the stars and put them in baskets or bottles. Younger Porrim did this with fireflies, before the prospect of caves and slavery was even in her mind. As you work on your projects - always a design to complete, or an essay to pen - you could gaze at them and dream like you were that young girl again. You assume, if you had reached god tier, you could have done this.

Ah. Something you didn’t accomplish.

You let your groomed hair tangle in the grass and you let the wet soil soak the back of your shirt. Your arms fold under your head, and you pose for a messy scene of a cliche soul-seeking painting. No one's watching. Tonight, you’re out star-gazing because of ever-present…emotions.

How easy it would be to be constantly stoic or classy, if you didn’t pinch the crook of your arm or fiddle with your nails when you felt stress or nervousness, if you didn't pluck strings from clothing or fuss with your hair. God, did you fucking feel stress.

You've never been uncomfortable with your body. You believe firmly that all women's bodies are deserving of respect and reject the notion that all transgender people experience bodily dysphoria. Transness isn't defined by dysphoria. This has kept you rooted to your confidence, soothed you whenever you felt you couldn't reach out to other girls, but after sweeps and sweeps in the afterlife, gender just becomes...another dream. Identity feels more like a memory to cling to, much like everything else. None of this is doubt of your gender. More like...

You’ve sorted out the names of your disillusionment. You’ve called your troubles dysphoria and disappointment and bitterness, you’ve called them demons and daymares. You’ve talked to Kankri about some of these thoughts before he called out that it was bordering on a public feelings jam.

"Porrim," he told you, "I know you frequently engage in activities among others unbound by Beforan and even Alternian societal norms of interaction, even out in view of others, but I have to remind you of my celibacy concerning all quadrants and physical _endeavors._ Please remember and respect I do not share the same desires nor needs at you. Quite frankly, Porrim...I find this discussion a bit…pale."

He’s such a wriggler.

You laugh to yourself.

Thinking about Kankri, though, makes you frown as soon as the humor leaves you. Sometimes, the fact that he acts like an untouchable intellectual frustrates you. And the fact that you BOTH act like this, like you aren’t hungry for a fight to let off some steam or you don’t know that everyone fucking discusses your sex life out of earshot. Or that you do the same, pry and meddle and nose your way into others business.

A cricket chirps in a nearby patch of grass. It almost startles you, but you are so used to polished perfection that you easily resist the urge to jump in surprise. You loathe so many instincts of yours, bloody or not.

What hypocrites the you and Kankri are. He speaks on every subject (well, except the ones you wish he would examine as much as you do) but cannot speak a single proper word on his heart’s affections for Latula.

You bite back a hiss. _Latula._ Most of the time you contain how much you despise that woman. Her pretense is much less subtle than yours. Everyone on your team fakes at least half of their goddamn personality, and everyone tends to pretend otherwise, but hers is….so much more weak. It empowers you knowing you can lie better than that girl. Yes, you are so much stronger than Latula Pyrope.

(Your heart is hollow space and you could pity Latula if you didn’t miss most of her.)

Anyway. Kankri. You need to sort out your thoughts on your Kankri. No more tangents.

When you place your hand on his shoulder, he brushes you off, as if you didn’t embrace him when he came to your hive as a child. Every time he came to visit, you welcomed him with open arms and warm food. Now he rejects your affection, and writes essays on it.

Of course, you are physically intimate with others. You have trolls waiting on your beck and call. If you wanted someone to spend a lonely night with, all you had to do was go on Trollian. You could have anyone. You could knock on Latula's door and open up to her like a bottle smashed against a wall, liquor splattering bloodily across the ceiling, a massacre of good glass and good alcohol. You two could knock back a couple glasses, break a few nails playing Troll Nintendo, and spill and spill and spill your secrets the way you do with others'. Spill and hold Latula's hand, her bruised, calloused hand, and ask her where the dragon cape you made her went.

But Kankri is your friend, and he has seen you cry. He has seen you shed tears and he has seen you wipe snot from your nose, he has seen you put bandages on your wounds and cuss over a stubbed toe.

Yet he won’t even hug you anymore without complaining or resisting.

As if you don’t know what culling was like for him, as if you can’t relate with the slavery you were practically forced into as jadeblood.

Kankri drains you like a neck wound - and sometimes he even disgusts you - and you care too much for that boy’s happiness. You cared so fucking much about these things that you couldn't even find the power to pluck jeweled stars from the sky and put them in baskets and bottles.

Every night you empty your pan into the universe and hope the stars will fill the white of your eyes with yellow.


End file.
